Tons of Still Photos & Screencaps from ‘The Box’, Including Plenty of Weird Stuff

I’ve been underestimating the weirdness factor of The Box, Richard Kelly’s upcoming thriller starring Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, and Frank Langella (see the trailer here). A bunch of new still images, plus some trailer screencaps, paint a picture of a pretty messed up movie. In a good way.

It’s not that I didn’t think The Box would contain some supernatural elements — it is, after all, based on the same short story (by Richard Matheson) that was turned into a Twilight Zone episode in the ’80s. It’s just that we’ve been hearing that writer/director Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko, Southland Tales) was finally making a mainstream thriller. If so, he’s managed to pump a lot of his signature strange sci-fi style into it.

Take this:

James Marsden sticking his finger into a watery void while some creepy woman watches. Sure. There’s a shot in the trailer that seems to correspond to this scene, taking place a few seconds before it. Here it is:

So the woman is summoning the water. While a bunch of people look on, with interest, but seemingly not amazement.

Let’s rewind further. There’s an earlier scene in the trailer with the woman telling James Marsden “he’s testing you.” She tells him this in a library full of people, with everybody — not just Marsden — hanging on her every word. It looks like this:

A lot of this movie seems to take place in the library. In an earlier part of the trailer, the same man is seen following Cameron Diaz three times, the last of which is outside her home window. Here he is:

And then there’s some stuff presumably from the climax of the movie or close to it:

Frank Langella lording over some kind of creepy hanger. Okay.

None of this comes with any context, of course. I can’t elaborate very far on what we’re seeing. Nowhere is this true moreso than in the following image, which baffles me:

Some kind of world map where letters keep flipping. And look at Africa, Europe, and Asia. They’re redistributing territories. What does this have to do with the rest of the movie?

The box is part of some global conspiracy?

An alien invasion that Cameron Diaz and James Marsden are being used as some kind of guinea pigs for?

We’ll find out on November 6th. In the meantime, check out a few more stills:

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